


Two Strays in Bucharest

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, PTSD, bucky finds a friend, but you know they still had the whole winter soldier thing to deal with, established stucky, in which I pretend Civil War didn't happen, it's small and has fur, mentions of hurting animals but no animals are actually hurt, purring metal arms, softe Bucharest Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 16:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15174782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: He hears the cry from a mile away. Desperate and high and wailing. He’s drawn to it like a moth to a lit match, his boots turning to follow before he can even think to question why.(Or the one where I really really wanted Bucky to find a kitten because he deserves a soft lil pal.)





	Two Strays in Bucharest

The nightmares keep him awake most nights. Sometimes, he curls in on himself and lets them come and keep coming, like a ship tossed about by stormy seas. After all, the nightmares often bring memories with them. He needs those as much as he needs to be Bucky again. Not the asset, not the soldat, not even the Commando.

Just Bucky.

Other nights, he just doesn’t have the strength to let them keep rolling through him, no matter what they might bring. Those nights, he pulls on layers and stalks around the streets and alleys of Bucharest, sticking to the shadows more than the light. The people in his neighborhood call him  _fantoma_. He’s not supposed to know this, but he hears them when they think he can’t.

It’s not what he wants to be called, but he’s certainly been called worse.

Tonight, the alley smells like cabbage and wet. He steps through a small puddle and listens to the slosh of it breaking around his boot. Nights like these, he has no aim except walking until sunrise. He’ll stumble into bed at first light and finally sleep. For some reason, the brightness of day helps keep the nightmares at arm’s length. He still has them, but less. And waking up to soft light is always better than waking up in the dark, shaking and screaming for Steve.

Hands shoved deep in his pockets, his walk all night plan seems simple enough to follow—he’s done it so many times before—but it won’t be the first time in his life that the universe has looked at his plans and brushed them aside like smoke.

He hears the cry from a mile away. Desperate and high and wailing. He’s drawn to it like a moth to a lit match, his boots turning to follow before he can even think to question why. When he does finally realize what he’s doing, he counts it as a victory, someone inside of him pumping his fist in the cool night air.

This is a mission Hydra never would've assigned. The darkest parts of his brain, the parts that doubt and question at every turn—even they can’t convince him that this is a task the asset, the soldat, would’ve handled at any point in its horrible career.

No, this is something Bucky would do. He thinks he might even remember…

He walks faster, turning down streets and alleys and moving closer and closer to those high-pitched whines. Until he knows he’s found the right place. He can’t see the source yet, just an old mattress leaning against a wall. And for a brief moment, it seems like the mattress itself is doing the crying.

The metal arm whirs with the desire to be used for something other than pain, so he lets it sling the mattress away even though his human arm could do it just as well. A small dart of black rushes past his feet, quick as lightning, but the soldier—no, the man—is faster.

He snatches it up by the scruff, shifting to cup it in both hands. Squirming and wiggling, its claws scrabble against metal while it keeps screaming. It’s all black, from the tufted triangles atop its head to the bean-like pads of its feet. As solid as the night sky above, the moon missing and the stars blacked out by the city lights below.

The programming tells him to kill it. It’s a liability. It gives away his position. It is not useful to the soldier or its mission. Squeeze it, snuff it out. It can be quick, even. Just comply, soldat, comp-

_No. Never._

What would Bucky do? A mantra that repeats in his head over and over, pushing away objectives and parameters and _zhelaniye, rzhavyy..._

What would Bucky do?  
     What would Bucky do?  
          What would Bucky do? 

“Hey punk, where’s your ma?” he whispers, and Brooklyn comes rushing into his head like a ride at Coney Island. The summer of ‘38. Things weren’t as bad as earlier on in the decade, but they still weren’t great, and he and Stevie were barely skating by. An extra mouth to feed wasn’t the best idea, but Bucky had seen the orange ball hiding behind a trash can, all bones, and he couldn’t just leave it there to die.

He’d asked Steve not to be mad at him when he walked in the front door holding a hissing alley cat, and Steve had just smiled and helped him give it a bath for the fleas, both of them covered in scratches by the end. Bucky had kissed every single one of the the lines on Steve’s arms and then both corners of his mouth. The world wouldn’t let them be Steve  _and_  Bucky, but at home not a damn soul could stop them.

And then they'd become Steve  _and_  Bucky (and Huxley).

The cat had only lived for a few years after that, but for those years, they were the only people in their building who didn’t have mice.

This cat, decades later and a world away, answers him with another loud cry. It’s a baby, small enough to hold in one hand if it would stay still long enough. The man thumbs at its chin. Then he sits down on the ground and cradles it to his chest to keep it warm, waiting and hoping for a mother that never shows.

When the first light of day hits, he stands up and whispers, “Yeah, me neither, pal. Not for a long time.” He nuzzles at it with his chin like it’s the most natural thing in the world. One more piece of the asset dies, never to be heard from again. One more piece of Bucky Barnes breathes to life again.

He walks it home, some part of him—what would Bucky do?—already resigned to keeping it.

“I think I’ll call you Stevie,” he says, zipping up his hoodie around black fur. The crying has stopped, and there’s only gentle purring in its wake, vibrating softly against his chest. He clenches and unclenches the metal fist to purr back.

Later that day, he finds he doesn’t know the Romanian word for “veterinarian.” The soldat wouldn’t have needed it and so it was never learned, never inserted into the tapes that played on a loop, on a loop, on a loop.

_Ucide, asculta, misiune. Kill, obey, mission. Ucide…_

The internet fixes yet another of Hydra’s mistakes and even gives him a recommendation.  _Medic veterinar. 0,5 kilometri,_ _4,6 stele_ _._

The man—Bucky—takes the kitten in and pays cash for a flea treatment and a bag of food. A month later when the other Steve finally locates him, he peers into the window of a squatter’s dwelling in Bucharest to find his husband asleep, a small black kitten curled into a ball in the center of his chest. Bucky will confess later that little Stevie helps soften the nightmares even better than the sunlight.  

Steve smiles and shakes his head, moving quietly inside the building. He can hear Bucky hear him and react, rapid footsteps stopping behind the door, an eye probably peering out into the hallway to see who's come for him.

Knocking is more pretense than anything else, because Bucky knows he's there and isn't running. Of course, he could also be standing there with a pistol, ready to finally finish his mission after all. Steve does it anyway, rapping on the wood with his knuckles, overwhelmed when the man who answers the door is definitely his Bucky. Different maybe, but his. There's the same black cat tucked under the metal arm. Bucky's other hand paws at the sleep in his blue-gray eyes.

“Human Steve,” Bucky says groggily. A weird thing to be called, but Steve will take literally anything besides  _who the hell is Bucky?_  And _you know me – no, I don’t!_

“Yeah, most days, pal.”

“Cat Steve,” Bucky says, jerking his head at the black bundle. Like it knows, it looks at Steve and lets out a loud meow.

“You named your cat after me?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, well, I guess I missed you.” Bucky shrugs. “Don’t let it go to your giant head,  _Captain_.”

“Too late for that,” Steve says. “It’s really you then, Buck?”

Bucky pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and shifts from one foot to the other. Whether he does it consciously or not, he moves the cat, cradling it in his arms and half-burying his chin in the fur along its back, like a living security blanket.

When he speaks, it’s soft and quiet and so, so human Steve can barely stand it.

“Yeah, most days, pal,” Bucky echoes. "I- I'm sorry, Stevie, I just wanted to- before." 

He doesn't have to explain. Steve doesn't care why he left or why he didn't come back sooner. He just cares that he's there, that he knows him, that he's alive and real and _Bucky_ enough to be hauling in strays. 

"I can't force you, Buck, but I think it’s time for you to come home.”

Please, please come home.  

Bucky doesn’t answer at first, but he slowly relaxes, a sheepish grin playing across his lips, casting his stubbled face in a softer light. For the first time since the ice, Steve’s fingers itch for a pencil.

“Okay,” Bucky says, still grinning, “but Stevie, doll, please don’t be mad. Thing is, I sorta found this cat.”

The memory lights across Steve’s brain, and then he's laughing. Not his booming Cap buy-war-bonds! laugh, but something smaller and lighter and belonging-only-to-Bucky-Barnes.

“Fine, but if that thing needs a bath, you’re on your own, buddy.”

And they’ll never be the same as they were back in that shitty Brooklyn apartment, not that they would’ve been anyway after the war and everything they both went through.

But they walk out of the building in Bucharest as Bucky  _and_  Steve (and Stevie), and for now, that'll do. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Tumblr thing](www.bisexualstarbucky.tumblr.com) and a I[Twitter thing](http://www.twitter.com/bistarbucky) if you want to come talk to me about your Stucky headcanons. Or just like send me links to great posts. Or music recs. 
> 
> Comments are little rays of sunshine in my life so feel free to put some of those down below.
> 
> Also, someone tagged me in [this art](http://kayaczek.tumblr.com/post/176628220967/i-came-across-this-photo-x-and-this-happened) by kayaczek because it fits this so well, and I needed to add it here so you can see a softe Bucharest Bucky with a kat.


End file.
